HE’S Not Dead, but His Career Is on Life-Support

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

In the late summer of 1979, we’d signed with ICM (International Creative Management) for representation, then the second largest agency in Hollywood, behind William Morris. We were meeting with the head of the concert division, and he just asked us about our availability sometime in the following month. He was being kind of coy then said, well, Bill Cosby needs an opener, and I think I know who to put in. Be still my beating heart! The guy whom I had nearly memorised three of his albums as a teenager, and we’re offered a chance to be on the same bill with Bill? It didn’t take long to agree to that.

Yep, got to meet Bill Cosby in 1979. Not only meet him and open for him, but actually hang with him. At a State Fair. In Puyallup, Washington. Fortunately, those last two minuses are fairly outweighed by the plusses, but this was not an easy gig by any stretch. It was actually a test for us, and to see if that pseudo-hip act we’d taken on a US tour with Robin Williams was going to translate away from the big cities. Well, yes, and no, but at least the negatives were all presented to us in the first show, which was a moderate disaster, and nowhere to go but up from there. We would have three more chances over the next two days to right the ship.

To add to the reality-check, some local dork with a cowboy hat and the charisma of a pencil was given the job of announcer, and dignified himself by not even knowing our name. “There they go,” he mumbled, followed immediately by “And now the act you’ve all been waiting for,” as if to echo the audience’s relief that our 30 minutes was over, and finally we could have funny stuff that wasn’t expecting us to know much more than the names of our children. Cosby came out to predictable tumultous cheering, and to top it off, opened his sweater to reveal a t-shirt of the Seattle Supersonics, their pro basketball team (who are now the Oklahoma City Thunder), which kicked off further frantic applause. He hadn’t even SAID anything yet, but the love was insured!

Just about everything Cosby did was based on familiarity. Lots of stuff about his kids, and their music, and about his wife and childbirth. Nothing based on news headlines, but in fact, an act that could be hermetically sealed and opened again in 25 years with virtually nothing in it dated except maybe the example of the scary songs the kids were listening to “these days.” He chose to highlight Musique’s “In The Bush,” because of its repetition of the phrase “push, push, in the bush,” and how the kids always have it at top volume, and how we had sensible songs when he was kid, like “Yip-yip-yip-yip, bum-um-um-um, Get a Job.” Somehow he managed to sound like the crusty old fart, yet also be funny, entertaining, and charming in the process. We began our own editing process on our act almost immediately from when he started talking. It was really difficult to fault it, since the proof was in the ovations he got throughout his hour on stage, from the same people that mostly stared at us.

Between shows, there was about 2-3 hours of down time, and no specific dressing rooms, but more an activity room where we were all thrust together. Cosby did an amazing thing, totally opposite of many headliner-opener relationships I’ve had over the years. He chose to hang out with us and ONLY us in that one activity room for the duration, and the same would happen the next day. He refused to let anyone else in, refused to sign any autographs (good thing I didn’t ask for one!), and forget it if anyone wanted a photo!

To us, he offered some advice about how to alter some bits that died in the first show, and his suggestions were heeded, plus we got rid of anything that was the least bit conceptual. But we also noticed during that time with him, he went out of his way to be anything but the guy on stage. He swore continually, and had this unexplainable habit of going to the door of the room we were in, which opened onto the fairgrounds, and hawk a big loogie. Wonder if he hit any unfortunate passers-by! He’s not the first person I’ve ever met who had that habit, but he did seem to do it like clockwork about every five minutes, sometimes in the middle of a sentence.

In reference to the part of Cosby that we’re finding out about now, the only clue he gave about that possible inclination was telling several anecdotes about things that happened when he was at The Playboy Mansion. Even then, I was thinking, “Mr. Family Man, what the hell are you doing at Hefner’s Den of Iniquity? Waiting around in case Kurt Vonnegut, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or Miles Davis show up?” He did try to give his stories the air of “Oh I just happened to be there,” but he certainly didn’t indicate his wife Camille was there with him.

Meanwhile, our shows continued to get progressively better, helped along by the dork who gave us the condescending outro actually apologizing for it, and asking us what we’d like him to say. By the second show on the second day, our confidence was fully restored, but we also felt that our future was not in this type of venue. We worked totally clean back then in terms of no profanity or material of a sexual nature, for we weren’t comfortable going there. Our act was mostly just stupid, and the lesson we learned in Puyallup was that even stupid has to be dumbed down sometimes.

Our experience with Cosby was a pleasant one, but in the ensuing years, he started to annoy me by joining the choir of veterans chastising the younger acts for being offensive. Eddie Murphy had one of his funniest bits (and his stand-up was among his weakest of talents) about Cosby lecturing him about his persistent use of the word “motherfucker” with Murphy mimicking Cosby struggling to actually say the word. Surely WE heard him say it enough! When we talked with him about Robin Williams, his reaction was, “I still see him thinking,” as if to say his off-the-cuff occasional brilliances were the result of him consulting some mental rolodex, rather than allowing that maybe the guy really has absorbed that much that the stuff just flows. Hard to fault though, what worked for Cosby as a stand-up had been working for over 15 years by the time we worked with him. Obviously, it continued into the 80’s with The Cosby Show, which my best friend, who hardly ever watches commercial television, summed up as, “It doesn’t need a laugh track, it needs an ‘awww’ track!” That’s probably why I was never really a fan of the show.

I’m not joining the gang wishing for Cosby to go to jail, though he sure sounds guilty as hell. There’s plenty of credibility in the claims against him. It’s hard to believe that all these women got together and said, “Hey, I know what we can do!” No, I’m sure he’s totally guilty, and he’s just lucky that the statute of limitations has run out for some of the claims, or he’d be facing the same fate as that of Britain’s much-loved Rolf Harris. He was remanded to jail earlier this year at age 84 on morals charges that went back several decades. Harris’s defense towards the end of his trial was quoting one of his old novelty records “Jake The Peg.” If Cosby goes on trial, and in his defense starts talking about Fat Albert and Old Weird Harold, then we could surmise he’s doomed.

November 23rd, 2014



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